It has emerged that a state-run AFAD camp set up near Suruç for refugees from Kobanê is located on the site of a massacre of Armenians in 1895. Bozan Demir (54), from Suruç, is of Armenian origin, and he said his parents had told him that thousands of Armenians had been massacred there in 1895. “Now our brothers and sisters are sleeping on the bones of our ancestors. This is unacceptable,” he said angrily.

Demir, İbrahim Halil Kaya (58) and 60-year-old Kurd Hakkı Fırat claimed the site of the AFAD camp on the Urfa road was where around 20 thousand Armenians had been brought from other provinces, and that 2,000 of them had been massacred. İbrahim Halil Kaya said his parents had told him about the massacre, adding that it was possible to see the bones there. “All you have to do is break the soil and you will find bones,” he said. Kaya said there were Armenians in Kobanê who were the grandchildren of the survivors of the massacre. “Now they have fled ISIS gangs and come to Suruç and find themselves sleeping on the bones of their ancestors,” he added.

Haki Fırat said he had heard many things from his grandparents about what had been done to the Armenians. He added: “Now the authorities have set up a camp there. What is the purpose of this? There are plenty of other places they could have used. In my opinion they wanted to remind us of that massacre.”

Fırat said the Ottomans had murdered Armenians in the name of Islam and now the ISIS gangs were doing the same thing to the Kurds. “Now ISIS represents the mentality of the Ottoman and Turkish states. Kurds who helped the Armenians in Ottoman times rotted in prison. Now we are being tried for helping the people from Kobanê. This summarises rather well the fact that the Ottomans, the AKP and ISIS share the same mentality,” he added.